New Delhi is a metropolis which is mainly famous for being the capital of India and its ridiculously bad traffic. So much so that we have now heard from the New York Times that the traffic police there have resorted to using facebook to let people post traffic offenders so that action can be taken against these offenders.

If you've ever watched on YouTube or gone to New Delhi for a first hand look at the traffic scenario there you would know that traffic laws are blatantly disregarded. There will be jaywalkers throughout the whole length of the road, scooters, motorcycles and bicycles weaving in and out of traffic and cars doing the same too. Motorcyclists will be going around the city without helmets and traffic lights ignored. Sometimes you could see the pedestrians crossing a four lane city street with the skills of a contortionist, yoga master and a gymnast as they usually see to bend and twist as they avoid passing vehicles of various sorts.

So the New Delhi traffic police had started a Facebook page in June 2010 so that the public can interact with them. And since photographs of motorists flaunting the law has been posted, the police have issued 665 traffic violation summonses. The Facebook page also has about 19,200 people liking it when I last checked. There are also 3,000 photographs for the Delhi police to vet through also. The photo below is from the site and shows a motorcyclist riding without a helmet.

Of course there are those who now complain that giving out summons via 'proof' from a social networking site is an invasion of privacy and that the authenticity of the photographs may be questionable. But in any case, there are those that support and those that do not.

Actually it isn't something so outrageous, we've heard that people not getting jobs when companies opened up their social networking site and found photographs showing them to be very drunk, overtly social or just plain stupid. If employers are looking through such social networking accounts, this isn't something strange indeed.

Now the question is whether we would be seeing something like this on the local front; the local traffic police having their own Facebook sites and summons being issued based on a photograph posted on Facebook. If you happen to know anyone working in one of the above law enforcement agencies, point them in some other direction and not to this piece of news. It may give them ideas if you get what I mean.